Malik brightened again. “Ah, Edward, are the hormonal tests completed?”
“Yes, Doctor. And I have the drug cocktail prepared for the subject.”
Malik’s gaze shifted back to her. “Then it seems we must continue our discussion a little later, Dr. Polk. See if I can’t persuade you to look at this more rationally versus leaning on the Bible. But I guess that’s expected when you’re working on an island named Eden.”
Lorna placed a hand on her belly, fearing what was to come. Behind the technician appeared the familiar bulk of her bodyguard. Connor must have read the panic in her face. A hand settled to his holstered sidearm, discouraging any fight from her.
“After your injections,” Malik said, “you’ll want to lie down for at least a half hour. I’m afraid what’s to come will not be pleasant. Accelerating the follicle stimulation of your ovaries can be a bit”-he chose his next word carefully-“taxing!”
Lorna’s fear sharpened into a knife in her gut.
“Afterward we’ll talk again. We’ll have a couple of hours before your ovarian tissue will be ready for harvesting. Before that’s done, I’ll show you what we intend to do with your eggs.”
He waved her off. With no choice, Lorna stood up. It took an extra moment for her blood to follow. Her vision darkened at the edges.
Connor came forward and grabbed her elbow impatiently.
As she was hauled away she got one last look at the monitors on the wall. The brain scan continued to rotate on the screen, showing the magnetic storm raging within that skull.
Despite her terror about what was in store for her, a part of her went cold and determined at the sight-and its implication. God had banished man from the Garden of Eden for daring to trespass upon the Tree of Knowledge.
But what if man learned to grow his own Tree?
Where might it end?
She didn’t know the answer. She knew only one thing for certain.
Someone had to stop them.
Chapter 45
“Bon Dieu. You don’t look so good, little brother.”
Jack couldn’t argue with Randy’s assessment. He felt like someone had poured molten lead into his joints while leaving his skin to alternately burn or go damp with a cold sweat. He had drugged himself with some nondrowsy TheraFlu and hoped it would be enough to sustain him for another twenty-four hours.
“I’ll be fine,” he said to Randy, as much as to himself.
His brother stood a few yards from a small A-Star helicopter as it warmed up its engine, rotors whirling up to full speed. The roaring whine cut like a rusty hacksaw into his skull. The chopper would be airlifting Randy and Kyle over to the Thibodeauxs’ boat, currently steaming toward Lost Eden Cay.
Off to the side, Kyle stood with his arms crossed, anxious to get moving, one fingernail digging into his plaster cast, like a dog worrying a bone. He had wanted to join Jack’s assault team, to go directly after his sister, but his broken wrist precluded him from accompanying them. Not that Jack would have let Kyle anyway. He needed men he could trust, men with military training in covert operations.
Still, Kyle looked ready to claw his cast off and join Jack’s men. Mack Higgins and Bruce Kim waited a couple decks below, down by the wellhead with the drill crew. Even farther down, a seaplane floated at the foot of the offshore platform, ready to fly the assault team over to the island and dump them and their gear a mile offshore.
“You have the timetable?” Jack asked Randy.
His brother tapped a finger against his skull. “Mais oui. It’s all in here.”
Jack didn’t like the sound of that. He’d just spent the past half hour going over the assault plan in the office of the rig’s geologist. For this to work, each group would have to act in perfect synchronization.
Kyle stepped forward and cast a scowl in Randy’s direction. “Don’t worry. I have it all written down. We’ll wait for your signal before approaching the island.”
Jack nodded, glad at least that someone good with numbers was going to be aboard the Thibodeauxs’ boat. He had full confidence in Randy and his friends when it came to a down-and-dirty bar fight, but as to sticking to timetables, Cajuns seldom wore wristwatches.
Randy merely shrugged. “Whatever. We’ll be where we need to be.”
“And I’ll make sure they are,” Kyle added.
Now it was Randy’s turn to glower. “Je vais passer une calotte,” he threatened under his breath.
There was definitely no love lost between these two men. Jack hoped that old anger-buried deep between their two families-didn’t boil up into a problem for this mission.
“Just get on board the chopper,” Jack said. “I’ll touch base by radio when we’re in the air.”
The two men turned to the helicopter. They kept a wary distance from each other as they walked away.
Jack dismissed them from his mind and headed for the stairs that led down from the elevated helipad. He wanted to be out of direct earshot when the helicopter took off. His head pounded with each rising beat of the rotors as he climbed down the steep stairs. Finally sheltered from the rotorwash, he was assaulted again by the smell of oil and axle grease from the rig. The farther down he went, the worse it got, until he swore he could taste grease on the back of his tongue.
Fighting down a gag, he stopped on a landing that fronted the open Gulf. A fresh breeze blew in his face. He sucked down a few cold gulps to clear his head. As he did so the A-Star helicopter lifted off overhead and flew over the waters.
He watched the chopper swing south-then his cell phone vibrated in his pocket. Now what? He pulled it out and checked the caller ID. He didn’t recognize the number, except it was a New Orleans area code. Unsure who it was, he answered it brusquely.
A familiar voice responded, as calm and gentle as if this were an invitation to high tea. “Agent Menard… I’m glad I could still reach you.”
“Dr. Metoyer?” Jack let both his surprise and impatience ring out.
“I know you must be in a hurry,” Carlton Metoyer said, “but I believe I have information that may have a bearing on your mission.”
Jack stepped back into the freshening breeze off the Gulf to listen. “What is it?”
“It’s about what was done to the animals. With all that happened back at the lab, we never had time to review our DNA analysis on that extra chromosome found in those animals.”
Jack recalled that Lorna had mentioned something about an extra chromosome. She believed it was the cause of the strange mutation in the animals.